In Cameroon, parents don't name their babies right away. When I told this to a friend in the US, she exclaimed, 'What a good idea! They get to know the baby first, so they can choose a name that fits!" That isn't why Cameroonian parents wait, but it works for my blog.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Our friend Kennedy told us an interesting story tonight. Like many Cameroonians, he had no birth certificate. When he was in elementary school, one of his teachers said, “Oh, you were born on the same day as my son!” So from then on he thought he had been born in July of 1965. A few years ago, however, his older brother came to visit. He told him that he had visited their home village, gone to the clinic where he had been born and got his birth certificate, learning in the process that he was older than he had previously thought. So Kennedy did the same thing. He learned that he had been born in November 1963, on the day that his namesake (or, as they say here, his "homonym") had been shot. In other words, when he thought he was 40, he learned that he was 42.

While we were at Kennedy and Emma’s house, a young man came in. Kennedy exclaimed, “Oh, you can meet my son-in-law! He is married to the younger sister of my niece.” We were happy to know what he meant.